


two by two, hands of blue

by fanfoolishness (LoonyLupin), LoonyLupin



Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Angst, Dark, F/M, Lyrium, Lyrium Addiction, Lyrium Withdrawal, Templars
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-11
Updated: 2015-04-11
Packaged: 2018-03-22 07:21:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,309
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3720085
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LoonyLupin/pseuds/fanfoolishness, https://archiveofourown.org/users/LoonyLupin/pseuds/LoonyLupin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The war against Corypheus must be won at any cost, and despite Cullen's misgivings, the Inquisitor begins taking lyrium.  When withdrawal becomes too painful Cullen reluctantly follows suit.</p>
            </blockquote>





	two by two, hands of blue

**Author's Note:**

> Warning: this might be the angstiest thing I’ve written in a long time. Thanks to crisontumblr/APaintedScorpionDoll for the encouragement and melissagt on tumblr for the great [Templar/Inquisitor video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R0wOZcnRxqc&feature=iv&src_vid=W62FCAXFYQE&annotation_id=annotation_695275347) that helped with inspiration.

Valina Trevelyan’s fierce and fearless, freckles and ruddy cheeks, strong shoulders and calloused hands used to a greatsword’s heft.  She grins at Cullen in the snow, spars with him beside the soldiers beneath the glare of the Breach, and he finds himself falling.

She’s dark and driven, the green mark crackling in her palm, her eyes dangerous.  She brings templars to their side and he’s grateful not to feel the flare of magic bubbling around the camp, but the filth of red lyrium haunts his nightmares.  The dreams are getting worse, it seems, instead of better.  He thought things would get better -- no matter.  He will endure.

Haven falls and he’s terrified she’s fallen too, his fiery Herald burning like Andraste, but instead he finds her in the snow and ice and carries her to safety.  This close he realizes she’s smaller than she looks, and softer too.  He smoothes the hair from her brow and lays her down.  He’s beside her when she wakes and he’s the first person she sees, and her smile cuts him to the core.

They’re neither of them very good at certain things, and they smile and fumble over chess and awkward questions.  She asks him to speak to her like a challenge, her shoulders squaring even as she gazes hopefully up at him.  On the ramparts he kisses her like he’s storming into battle and she gives before him, soft and surprising again.  The way she sighs nearly ends him.

But in the night he’s ending in a different way, searing cramps in his belly, hands numb and tingling, sweat soaking the sheets.  Dreams make him shiver in the dark.  He remembers the taste of the lyrium, the blue chill on his tongue, and he burns for it.  He’s a man with his heart flayed open; it quivers for her but it’s the memory of lyrium that drives the beat.

He sees the stresses building up inside her, that hunger to win at any cost.  Cullen knows she’ll do anything for victory and he loves her for it, though he doesn’t say the words, not yet, not yet.  She’s beautiful like the sun, deadly like fire and shadow, but it’s not enough for her.  She trains and fights and kills and still the muscles in her arms strain for more.  She wants to serve.

She almost apologizes to him, but she doesn’t, when she shows him the little box and the philters that it holds.

He wants to shake her.  Wants to tell her  _no, no, no_.  So he tries but the words don’t reach her and she says  _If this will help defeat him, isn’t that worth any cost?_

_Not this cost,_  he tries to say, but the words stick in his throat and she can’t hear them.  Won’t hear them, maybe.  Yet it’s her life, her choice, and though it wounds him he cannot leave her to face it on her own.

She tastes different after.  Bluer, almost.  His mouth buzzes when he kisses her, but he loves her, Maker help him, he loves her despite it.

He doesn’t know if it’s the little taste of lyrium on her lips -- maybe it is -- but the nights keep getting worse.  Even in the daytime Leliana catches him leaning too hard on the war table for it to be casual, though she cannot see the way his knuckles whiten when he wears his gloves.  Josephine asks after his headaches and beneath his breath he mutters that it’s nothing.  He finds reasons not to take up sword and shield to lead the soldiers because he fears his balance will betray him.  He keeps his gloves and cloak on all the time, but he’s still always cold.

And when it’s quiet, that’s when he remembers -- curdled blood seeping into his boots, monstrous faces ripping open, saliva-choked voices oozing in his ears, the filthy taunts, the screams...

It’s hard for him to eat these days.  He stumbles sometimes walking on the stone floors though they are smooth and even.  He needs a belt to keep his trousers from slipping over the jut of his hips; they don’t fit quite right anymore.

Her smile gives him strength, her hand in his an anchor that has nothing to do with rifts or magic, but she’s not enough and she shouldn’t have to be.  He knows that.

He’s breaking up, bits of him falling away into the void, and he just smiles at her so he can  pretend he’s doing well.  She’s gone enough that his deception works for a time.   And part of him really is all right, the part that loves her, the part that holds her and presses a kiss to the top of her head.  She’s the only thing that keeps him here with both feet on the ground.

But one day he’s shivering even in the sunlight, bowed with biting pain in his bones and belly, nightmares in his waking eyes.  This is wrong, he’s  _wrong_ , and he’s frightened in a way he’s never been.  He staggers blindly, reeling as he walks.  

He tries to tell Cassandra.  Tries to make her realize.  But she’s holding onto his honor  _for_  him and she won’t listen, won’t see.

He still has some in his study, the emergency supply he’d set aside a time like this, but he hates it so.  His hands shake on the desk and he’s enraged, the anger keeping him safe against whatever else might try to take him.  Anger is better than fear, always has been.

She finds him -- of course she does -- and he sees the way she fears him with every step he paces, every time he grips the desk for support, every time he chokes back the burn of tears.   _I tried to warn you_ , he thinks but does not say.

His duty burns inside of him and he remembers he cannot cast it aside, even when the pain builds and the dreams crowd out what’s truly there.  He knows the answer.  He’s known it a long time.

He had hoped….

He had hoped it would not come to this.

_Please, Cullen.  Take the lyrium._   And her voice says the words he wants and hates and needs, and she’s soft in a way he never hoped to see.  

His hands shake as he picks up a fallen philter, and the weight of it is like a friend.  He drinks and the world shrinks to the taste of blue;  it clings to his tongue so sweetly.  

Maker take him but he’s missed the leash, and it makes him want to weep.

 

* * *

 

She tells him that it’s temporary.  Tells him they’ll find another way once this is over.   _They_.  It isn’t only him they have to worry for.  He remembers it every time they kiss, every time he traces the scars on her back and chest, every time they make love and she cries his name.

The pains leave him.  The nightmares dim.  He feels the strength flow in him like a river, and he feels young and keen again.  He trains his soldiers on the battlefield with her at his side, sword and shield in hand, power thrumming in his touch.  The world is bright and real once more, and they’re both bright, too, and he tries to tell himself it’s as it should be.

He believes it for a little even if he hates the way his hands have not forgotten how to prepare the lyrium, crush it, mix it.  He tells himself it’s all right when he shares the morning dose with her, when he kisses her afterward, when he sees the way her cheeks flush from the power that it brings.  

One night Valina gets back late and comes to visit him, and he sees it as she pulls out maps and documents -- how her hand shakes, fingers trembling on the parchment.  She sees it too, and the way her eyes darken makes him ache.  Neither of them says a word.  He only goes and fetches the kit, methodically prepares the lyrium, hands her the philter.  Is it fear that flickers in her eyes?  He does not ask.  He only watches the way the muscles in her throat work as she swallows.

Her hand is steady now, but everything is wrong.

 

* * *

 

They're victorious, of course, how could they not be?  The Maker and Andraste are on their side, and their enemies fall before them.  They celebrate and in the quiet that follows, as she looks out at the mountains from her balcony, he fumbles with a little box and a simple ring and sinks to one knee.  There's tears in her eyes as she nods and a smile that lights up the whole of her, and he glows with it, and he thinks maybe they'll make it after all as long as they're together.

The Inquisition rolls forward.  There is still so much good for them to do in this world.  He begins to reform the templar order, sends troops to destroy the red lyrium that still lies as a scourge on the countryside.  He hears the title  _Knight-Vigilant_  whispered in the shadows and he pretends he does not hear.  He throws himself into his work, into her, and if he dashes himself against her like a ship against the shore does it matter?

Skyhold begins to empty, troops sent out on new missions, new orders.  There are still templars in the barracks, training, growing.  The lyrium stores always run low before the new shipment.

The fickle mountain weather rears its head and one day it begins to snow.  And snow.  The roads are buried in the blizzard and it’s difficult to move even inside of Skyhold, the drifts are so high, the winds so fierce.  Everybody moves indoors and though Cullen minds the lack of productivity it is only a minor inconvenience at first.

Until the lyrium shipment cannot make it through.

He tries not to worry, as they still have some lyrium stockpiled in case of just such an event.  But the templars use it so regularly.  He sets shorter rations on them all, two doses a day instead of three, and he thinks it will be enough.  But the blizzard lasts three days and by the time it’s safe to send the soldiers out to clear the snow, a second one begins.  They’re trapped and the supply of blue is fading fast.  They do not receive the second shipment.

Cullen paces in his study that morning, staring at what lays on his desk.  It’s a secret he tried to hide from her, a last resort he’s slowly accumulated over months just in case of something like this.  He’s passed some along to the barracks already, but not all of it, something in him hungering to keep back a little for himself.  Shame twists inside him but the grasping hunger whispers that he needs it.

He’s already seen the way some of the templars struggle with the cut rations.  Fights have been breaking out in the close quarters.  Some of the older templars are already in the infirmary, fighting fevers and chills.  

He can keep them going a little longer if he leaves nothing for himself.

Cullen closes his eyes, remembers those months he tried, remembers nightmares and pain and how hard it was sometimes to breathe.  But he also remembers that faint sense of pride he used to have after every night of broken sleep, after every night without those little bottles.  And he misses that feeling.  Misses the man he might have been.

He gathers up the vials into their chest, takes the familiar route to the templars’ quarters.  When he hands the box to the captain he smiles tightly and does not tell the man where he got the lyrium.

Maybe he can last at least this long.

 

* * *

 

There are two days until the next lyrium shipment is due to arrive and the weather is beginning to improve.  Soldiers are out on the pass, shoveling snow, clearing roads.  Valina is restless in the walls of Skyhold, roams the halls.  She goes to visit him.  She has scarcely seen him these past few days, which is not like him; he had sent a note to her quarters, letting her know he was working too hard to be disturbed.

But as soon as she enters his study she knows fear.

There’s always a calculated chaos in the way he organizes things, everything just so to him, haphazard and messy to her.  With time she’s grown to read the way he keeps things, troop reports on this chair, maps sticking out of the bookshelf, books and journals piled beneath the window.  Today everything is tumbled on the floor like it’s been thrown, and Cullen is not at his desk.

“Cullen?” she calls, voice rising with concern.  She sets her hands on the ladder, feels the wood beneath her fingers.  It’s solid and real.  She’s grateful that her hands do not tremble.  She has been able to take her normal doses of lyrium and she feels strong, ready for anything and everything.

He does not answer and she climbs the ladder, wondering if he is still sleeping.  It is not like him.  He should be up and working by now, the hour growing towards midday.

She reaches the second floor and pulls herself up.  He’s huddled in bed, blankets covering him so that he is only a man-shaped hillock beneath the covers.  “Cullen,” she calls again, sitting on the edge of the bed and pulling the blankets back.

He is awake.  No one could sleep in the position that he’s in.  He’s balled up, his body tight and tense and trembling, arms wrapped around his stomach, eyes screwed shut and his mouth a thin hard line.  His breaths are sharp, shallow, pained.

“ _Cullen_ ,” she whispers.

She is not ready for this.

“Leave me,” he groans, his eyes flickering open.  His face is pulled in a grimace, and he reaches out, digging his fingers into the bedding.

She knows what’s happened.  There can be no other cause of this.  “You gave them your lyrium,” Valina says, and her voice is stiff and cold.  She reaches out cautiously to touch his shoulder and he flinches from her, as if her touch hurts, as if he can’t bear her to be there.  His silence is the confirmation that she needs.

“What are you doing?” she asks, harsher than she means to be.  But she can barely look at him like this.

“I’ve gone without before.  They haven’t,” Cullen says, each word taking great effort.  He manages to raise his head to look at her.  Sweat slicks his hair to his forehead in damp ringlets.

“Look at yourself, Cullen, you can’t do this.  How long has it been?”

“Two and a half days.  It’s always worse at the beginning,” he says stubbornly, turning away from her so she cannot see the way his face twists.  “I can get through this.  And if I can endure the next few days, perhaps I can stop entirely --

“Do you remember how much pain you were in that day I asked you to start once more?” she asks.  “That was after months without it.”  She lets out a long breath.  “Please don’t ask me to see that again.”

He rolls back to face her, lifting his head up from the pillow to stare.  Dark circles ring his eyes.  “If I had stayed the course then, maybe we would not be here now.”  The words are foreign in his mouth, feeling like an accusation.  She hears, though he does not say,  _You told me to take it again._

She does not rise to the bait, real or imagined.  “I’m going to go get my supply.”  She makes to slide off the bed, but his voice stops her.

“I don’t want it.”  It comes out a snarl.

Her hands ball into fists and she glares at him, anger coalescing in a sharp, burning center within her.  “I have what you need, enough for both of us.  This is pointless.”

“I never wanted you to start in the first place!”  He’s shuddering all over, staring up at her with wild eyes, teeth gritted.  He looks like an animal caught with its leg in a trap.

“That decision is done!  And it worked, didn’t it?  Corypheus is destroyed and the world is safe, for now.  If lyrium was the only price I paid, I consider it fair,” she says.

“Do you?”

She considers.  Truly thinks about it.  She gets to her feet, peers up at the ceiling.  They’ve  temporarily patched it with canvas to keep the snow out.  She thinks of the thick mouthfeel of lyrium, how it enervates and hums within her.  “I could have paid a greater price.  I could  have died.”  She sighs, remembering the boil of red lyrium dragonfire on her skin, Corypheus’ final attacks.  

“Hindsight is always perfect, isn’t it?  I thought I had to do this to defeat him,” she says.  “But he’s gone, and…”  Her voice goes small.  “I do still need it.”  She remembers when she has not been able to get to her dose in time, how it sent her weak and trembling with a hunger that ripped deep.  

“I warned you.  I told you --”

“I know what you said!  I thought this was the only way, or I would never have started.  But now that I have… I don’t think I can stop.”  The words lie between them like a drawn weapon.  She paces, trying to get away from what she’s said.  “And I don’t think you can either.”

“It’s not about whether I can.  It’s about what I must do,” he says, resting one arm over his eyes to block out the candlelight.  Sweat glistens on his skin.

“Don’t play the martyr here, Cullen!  You’re white as a sheet and I can see you shaking from here.  This is killing you.  What does this prove except that you’re willing to torture yourself?”

“It proves that I am  _myself_ , not whatever lyrium makes of me,” he bites out.

“This isn’t a matter of simple willpower,” she says, holding her hands out before her in a pleading gesture.  “No matter how resolute your decision, your body can only handle so much strain.  If you need to take it, it does not mean you have failed.”  Tears sting her eyes, and she wipes them, trying not to let him see her cry.  “Please, Cullen, stop this.  For me.”

“No!”  He forces himself upright, gasping, furious.  “This is my decision, Valina!  I have to do this!”

“There has to be a better way!”

He’s breathing heavily, and she’s not sure if it’s from the withdrawal or the emotion.  He’s near tears himself, voice cracking, his eyes looking redder.  The words falter on his lips.  “If I don’t try now, I never will again.  This is my choice, Valina.”  He swallows, and his voice drops to a bitter whisper.  “You’ve already taken that away from me once.”

Valina freezes.  To think he would put this on her --  She’s half-sick with worry and anger, tries to keep herself together but it’s hard, so hard, she doesn’t know how she bears it.  “You asked my opinion then, lest you forget, and I told you I didn’t want you to die.  That still holds true, you stubborn arse!”

“I’m not asking for your opinion now,” he growls.  His tawny eyes belong to something feral, not the man she is to marry.  “ _Leave_.”

She stares at him.  He’s never said that before.  Not to her.  “Fine.”  

She sees his eyes softening, his mouth opening for an apology, but it’s too late.  Without another word she slides down the ladder and leaves his study, slamming the door behind her.

She hasn’t cried in years, not since she was a little girl, but when she finally makes it back to her quarters she collapses onto her bed and cries.  Everything’s wrong and she’s furious and frightened and helpless to make him do what he will not do, and it builds inside her until she’s sick with it.  

She doesn’t eat.  She barely remembers to rise and take her next dose of lyrium, which soothes her more than she likes.  She knows why he wants to be free of it, but it isn’t worth what it’s doing to him, it isn’t worth it.  Why can’t he understand that?

She lights a fire, and she stares into its depths unblinking until the flames are seared into her mind’s eye, until all the world shrinks to fire burning bright.

 

* * *

 

_Oh, no._

The words unspool in his hazy mind, slow and sluggish, two small syllables that do not sit well with him.  His limbs feel like stone, and it is harder to draw breath through the weight of it.  He breathes in.  He breathes out.  

There’s a fire burning in him and he does not know if it can be extinguished.  He does not know if it should be.

He curls against the blankets, hot and cold both, pain burrowing beneath his skin where he can’t get at it.  He doesn’t remember it being this bad before.  He breathes in.  He breathes out.

The words repeat in his head, two little words, that’s all they are.  They’re regret and apology, shame and sorrow, fear and faith.  Dreams roar in his head louder than the world outside, desire coiled against his flesh, blood heavy in the air.  He’s weeping, maybe, or shivering; it does not really matter which.  He is too distracted by the throbbing split in his head, every heartbeat bringing another wave of pain.  It truly  _wasn’t_  this bad before.

_Oh, no._

He remembers her face, beautiful, stricken, frightened.  For him.  She was right, he realizes faintly, and he tries to sit up.  He should go for help.  He is not doing well.  This isn’t the way, it isn’t safe.  But when he sits up there’s a spinning and a swaying and he’s crumpled back against the pillows, trying not to choke.  He’s so tired, drowsy in a way that feels wrong, feels like something different than mere exhaustion.  It feels almost comforting.  

He remembers he loves her.  Did he remember to say it?

He breathes in. The air stutters in his throat, catching, like he’s forgotten how.

Beat.

Beat.

_Oh, no._

 

* * *

 

She hammers on the door in a panic, until her palms are bloodied and raw with splinters.  When there is no answer she turns her shoulder, rams the door, feels the hinges start to give.  On the third pass the hinges break and she’s in, shouting for him, climbing up the ladder so fast she hits her head trying to come through the hole but she doesn’t notice, doesn’t even feel it.

The candles are guttering in the candelabra and she sees him naked on the floor, half-covered in blankets, his face pressed against the cold stone.  His arms and legs shouldn’t  _be_  like that, shouldn’t be at those angles, shouldn’t be so  _limp_  --

The healers climb the ladder behind her, Dorian and Vivienne with their eyes wide and faces tight, but she does not notice.  She sinks to her knees beside him, grabs him by the shoulder, shouts until she’s hoarse, shakes him like a rag doll.  But he’s heavy and boneless beside her.

Magic flares around her, soft green light bathing him.  She fumbles in her pockets, pulls out the little vials, opens them up.  Her hands shake so badly some of it spills, blue liquid sticky between her fingers, and she lifts his head.  He’s so heavy...  She pours the liquid into his half-opened mouth, smears it over his gums and tongue since he cannot swallow.  She rests his head in her lap, her trembling hands stroking his curls over and over again like a prayer, like a plea, like a promise.

He does not stir.  It’s not until she feels Dorian’s warm hand on her own that she realizes how cold Cullen is.

 

* * *

 

_To work?_  she asks herself each morning.  She hears the way he used to ask her that, business-like at first, slowly warming, finally becoming almost tender.  It’s the only way she can get herself out of the too-large bed.

Underclothes on.  Boots buckled.  Armor tightened.  She’s the picture of a warrior, a templar, an Inquisitor.

Lyrium taken.

Floods her veins, makes her body hum, makes her muscles ready.  Her hand aches for the weight of her sword.

She’s just an empty vessel now, hollowed and haunted, all the better for lyrium to fill the void.  If she can keep fighting, if she can keep working, isn’t that enough?

It isn’t, but she does not remember how to feel otherwise.  Not really.  She’s pithed of everything but the way his face looked when she finally turned his head, when she saw his staring eyes.  They had been so, so still.

She stares at herself in the mirror, brushes her hair out of her eyes.  She reaches for her gloves; she always puts them on last.

Right hand first.  The glove fits on easily, sliding over her nails and knuckles, the leather familiar and comforting.

Left hand.  This is the difficult one.  She holds the glove in her right hand, gazes at her pale skin, lifts her hand to better see the simple ring on the fourth finger.  It will need to be resized again; it keeps trying to slip off.

She closes her eyes.  Places the left glove, covers the ring.

If anyone was to look at her, they would see only strength, resilience, power.  They would not see the silverite ring on her finger; they would not see the endless emptiness that swallows her.

“To work?” she murmurs, and her feet take the stairs, and her steps are steady and sure.

**Author's Note:**

> This makes me hurt and I hope it made all of you hurt too. ;_;


End file.
